Landon Donovan plans to return to the LA Galaxy during the final week of March, coach Bruce Arena confirmed Monday.

Arena wouldn’t give an exact day, but he was a bit more specific than the last time he discussed Donovan’s return, when he told reporters that the five-time MLS Cup champion will be back during, “The last week in March. He’s coming back one of those days.”

Donovan, who just turned 31 and has one year remaining on his MLS contract, has been on unpaid leave since LA won its second straight MLS Cup title on Dec. 1. He has not trained with the Galaxy or played for the U.S. national team since and recently took a 10-day vacation to Cambodia, where he was photographed playing pick-up soccer with locals.

LA opened the MLS season with a 4-0 win over the Chicago Fire and then played Costa Rica’s CS Herediano to a 0-0 draw in the first leg of its two-game CONCACAF Champions League quarterfinal series last week. The Galaxy host Herediano in Wednesday’s decider and then have two more MLS games on the schedule before Donovan returns.

Even if he comes back toward the beginning of that week, he’s still unlikely to play on March 30 when LA visits Toronto FC.

Donovan’s club captaincy has been passed on permanently to forward Robbie Keane.

Donovan hasn’t spoken to the media recently but last month he did meet with students at an event at the University of Southern California, where he said, “I do have interest in playing for the national team again. … I still feel like I needed some time to rest, but absolutely, if given the chance then yes, I want to play again.”

The U.S. will play a pair of critical World Cup qualifiers on March 22 and 26 but then isn’t scheduled to return to the field until the end of May, giving Donovan time to regain his fitness.

U.S. coach Jurgen Klinsmann has said several times that he hasn’t closed the door completely on Donovan and that he will re-evaluate the program’s all-time leading scorer once he returns to the field.

“We always have the approach in our environment that the door is always open,” Klinsmann told U.S. Soccer’s website. “I’ve always said I have all the respect for what Landon did in his career … but we also told him that the team is developing.

"The team is moving on. He’s been barely a part of it since I took over almost two years ago, and therefore we’ll see where he’s at when he comes back into the game—what his rhythm is and what his shape is.

"How we look at him, how we evaluate him is different than how the Galaxy evaluate him because his role with us is a different one. So we’ll see where he’s at and whether he comes back or not.”